Mayor Tony Mack, left, and mayoral aide Anthony Roberts with a bust of President Barack Obama in City Hall following a December 2012 dedication ceremony.City of Trenton

TRENTON — Under oath, more than a dozen city employees were questioned yesterday during a closed-door hearing by a special city council subcommittee trying to find out how money was gathered to finance a bust of President Barack Obama that now sits in City Hall.

In total, 18 people including Mayor Tony Mack were subpoenaed to appear in front of the three-member investigatory committee, as the city council’s probe into the bust intensified. Employees spent anywhere from a few minutes to — in the case of mayoral aide Anthony Roberts — more than an hour testifying about the process to raise private donations and purchase the sculpture.

“What we were interested in, is how much individuals gave, because we never got a full accounting of the funds,” said Councilman Zachary Chester, the chairman of the subcommittee.

According to Chester, the meeting could not be open to the public because the majority of the people being questioned were city employees, who had to testify one by one and made the conversations personnel issues.

Clarifying the issue in an interview after last night’s city council meeting, city attorney Caryl Amana said she believed that council did not say that the hearings had to be public when members voted to form the investigatory committee in January.

“It was a fact-finding mission for the three members of an investigatory committee to ask questions, some of them personal, to people appearing before them and they will submit a report of their findings,” she said. “It did not appear to me that the intention was to open it up to the public.”

Nearly $1,300 of public funds from the mayor’s office budget were used to purchase a stone base for the faux-bronze bust, but officials have maintained the rest came from private donations. Even the cost for the base was repaid by donors to avoid the appearance of impropriety, Roberts’ attorney, John Warenda, said.

Mack was subpoenaed and appeared yesterday morning, but his testimony was rescheduled so the mayor could obtain legal counsel, Chester said. Mack is separately under six counts of federal indictment including bribery, extortion, wire and mail fraud, which he has pleaded not guilty to, after an FBI sting ensnared him last year.

The Obama bust hearing was conducted during a closed session in the council’s conference room, as the employees on deck waited in the larger council chambers outside the room. Many of the employees were frustrated by the proceeding, which they felt was a waste of time.

“That’s a given,” said Public Property Division Director Harold Hall, a close Mack ally who donated to the bust. “You saw all the bodies in there.”

Roberts and Warenda provided the council members with receipts, a breakdown of donors by amount given, and checks from the largest project donors, including insurance company Borden Perlman, which wrote a $500 check directly to the St. Louis Sculpture Factory, which manufactured the bust.

Roberts’ lengthy testimony was “tedious and fair,” Warenda said after emerging from the conference room around 1 p.m.

“It’s a lot of minutiae, but that’s pretty much par for the course when you’re doing an investigation,” Warenda said.

Questions from Chester, Councilwoman Marge Caldwell-Wilson, and council president Phyllis Holly-Ward included the legal status of the Obama Bust Committee, how the bust was installed and glued to the floor of the City Hall atrium, who collected checks, and whether or not the effort was a city-run or private initiative, Warenda said.

The council has been digging into the matter of the bust for five months, since Holly-Ward spoke with employees who told her they were coerced to give donations.

Holly-Ward said she referred the matter to an unspecified law enforcement agency.
In January, council unanimously voted to create the three-member investigatory committee, which would have subpoena power and look into the bust funding.

Subpoenas were handed out in late April, the witnesses said.

“The concern is the inquiry has been asked and answered several times already,” Warenda said.

Chester said council members had been dissatisfied with Roberts’ response, and could not get him to appear during a regular meeting when they requested. In a letter sent to council members in January, Roberts said he failed to come before the body twice that month due to illness and a previously scheduled event.

The employees required to appear included Hall, head park ranger Robert “Chico” Mendez who gave a $50 money order, and John Seigle, assistant to Business Administrator Sam Hutchinson, who donated $20 via money order. Fire Director Qareeb Bashir, who donated a $50 check, was trying to get back to his duties as quickly as possible.

“I have a lot of work to do,” Bashir said as he waited to be called.

Roberts will make all the checks available to the subcommittee to view but not retain, Warenda said.

“Mr. Roberts is not going to turn over copies of the checks themselves because of privacy and identity theft issues,” he said.

Chester said the process went well and was worthwhile. Despite years of frustration over projects, contracts, and deals Mack’s administration has pursued, the decision to fully investigate the bust comes from a place where the seven-person city council finds a collective will.

“We have conversations about what we can do,” Chester said. “The question is, are the seven of us ready to do them?”

Though the entire bust project cost a little over $5,000, Chester defended the governing body’s decision not to tackle issues like Mack’s learning centers or park projects, where tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds are being spend with little oversight.
“We would, but remember it takes a committee of council members – we have to form a committee,” he said.